ACN Volume 4 No 2-3 Spring 1992

    Interview with Staff Member Michael Hauben on the Occasion 
         of the 10th Anniversary of the Personal Computer

	               Part I

(Editor's Note: This interview was conducted on August 11, 1991.
It has been edited.)

Ronda: Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the introduction of
the IBM personal computer on August 12, 1981. Also, one of our
staff members, Michael Hauben, is leaving Michigan to go to
college in N.Y. Therefore, it seemed an appropriate time to look
back on the past 10 years and to review how the introduction of
the personal computer has affected our lives. Michael is now 18.
In 1981 he was 8 years old and already involved with computers.
Michael is not only one of the beneficiaries of the computer
revolution. The computer revolution was carried out, not so much
by companies like IBM, but more importantly, by computer
hobbyists like Michael Hauben. Thus in honor of the computer
hobbyists, who gave birth to and developed the personal computer,
we would like to review some of your experiences, Michael, with
the computer.

William: How did you get started with computers?

Michael: The first place I really saw computers was at an exhibit
in Toronto over 10 years ago. There was a robot that was like the
4 axes machine that auto workers use. They also had a computer
exhibit. I don't remember what kind of computer was on display
but they were just a bunch of computers running different kinds
of programs set up there at the Canadian National Exhibit. That
really peaked my interest somehow.
   When I was 8 (in 1981), I took a computer class at Schoolcraft
Community College, in what was called the Kids College. It was
part of what they called the TAG (Talented and Gifted) Program.
The teacher's name was Mrs. Brown. We learned on the Apple II+'s.
The first day of class, Mrs. Brown lifted the top of the APPLE
and said, "There, that's all there is to it, There's nothing to
be afraid of." That was a very good introduction to the computer
because it showed there was nothing to be afraid of. That we
could completely control it. I learned BASIC there. I took
several other classes in that program. I think I took three. I
didn't take all the BASIC language classes offered. But I took a
test that they had for their normal BASIC college level classes
and I wound up getting three college credits for the BASIC
language class. And I didn't do so good because I ended up only
getting a B on the test. But the experience was interesting and
from then on whenever there was a computer available I tried to
use it.
   After the trip to Toronto, I always wanted to buy a computer.
There was the Texas Instruments 99/4a (TI 99/4a) and I don't
remember how much it cost, but it was expensive. There was the
Timex Sinclair 1000 (TS 1000) and that was much cheaper. My
family and I had seen Sinclair computers in England when we
visited. These computers could be hooked up to a normal t.v. set.
I saved up my money and bought a TS-1000. Using it I more
thoroughly learned BASIC. My father and I programmed a lot in
BASIC with only 2K memory. We never seemed to run out of memory.
We just played around and tried to do lots of different things,
tried writing little games, graphics and we dabbled a little in
machine language, not a lot however. Whenever I had the chance,
whether it was summer camp or in a computer store, I'd try to do
something with the computer. I learned BASIC, I learned LOGO on
the TI-99/4a in Camp, and I played around with APPLES and with
Commodore PETS. In my elementary school, there was a terminal
hooked in with the mainframe of the Dearborn Schools. At that
time there were many programs on the mainframe. They had BASIC.
They had games like the OREGON TRAIL, etc. I subscribed to two or
three magazines for the TS-1000. I bought books, did all the TRY
THIS type of small programs. Those were always fun because there
would always be problems with the programs. There would always be
bugs. The books and sample programs were exciting somehow. I
haven't found many books similar for programming on the IBM PCs
today, books that I have found exciting for a hobbyist. And this
is sad.
   Soon after I bought the TS-1000, it couldn't have been more
than a couple of years, I was trying to choose between the
TS-2068 and the Commodore 64. I think the Commodore was more
expensive. The TS-2068 had better color, and a more developed
version of BASIC. The Commodore 64 was better in that it had a
disk drive and the TS-1000 only had a tape drive you could use.
The Commodore also had a real keyboard, while the Timex utilized
raised chicklet keys. I bought the TS-2068. Then I had my first
real lesson in the computer world. Three months after I bought
the TS-2068, Timex stopped selling it and supporting it. Timex
made a deal with Commodore. There was an agreement to sell the
Sinclair in England and Europe and Commodore in the United
States. That was a shock because I thought I made a better
choice, but it turned out the better deal is not always the best
choice.
   And my father and I did programming on that, but not really as
much as we did on the TS-1000. It was a lot less, even though
there was the added attraction of the color and the sound and the
joystick port. And so I still did things and I tried to pick up
on things whenever I could.
   Christmas of 1984, we bought a Sanyo MBC-550-2 which was a
MS-DOS compatible, but not an IBM compatible, machine. The
operating system was IBM compatible, but the graphics were
different, the sound was different, and the BASIC was different.
The Sanyo was a better machine for graphics, I think 640 x 400
with 4 colors if not 16. And WordStar worked. That's why my
family got it as a wordprocessor. I learned MS-Dos. I got more
into the PC world. We subscribed to a Sanyo magazine for a while.
We went to the Sanyo Users' groups for a while. We occasionally
went to SEMCO (Southeast Michigan Computer Organization), but
somehow that was already oriented toward business and they
weren't very interested in helping us. Then in 1985, through
INACOMP, my mother won a Compaq Portable. It was one of the
earliest to come out that was fully IBM compatible. It was a
luggable portable, and it weighed about 20 pounds, if not more.
And that's how I really got into IBM. We had a choice between a
modem and a hard drive. We got a modem. It was a breakthrough.
The hard drive seemed important but the modem was more important.
We wound up getting a hard drive later on. With the modem, it
lets you connect to the outside world. With your own little
system you'd be like a hermit, but in connecting with the rest of
the world, it's other people's opinions, different discussions
about computers, about current events, debates about what's going
on in the world and just general BS also. And you came into
contact with people, you came into contact with different files
to use with your computer, with what was going on with the
computer scene and so somehow it was like a replacement for a
user group. And depending upon the time, there was either a lot
going on or a little going on.

Ronda: What do you mean?

Michael: Well right now not many boards I know have much debate
on them. There are two that I am on. Both of them have debates
on-going. I'm sure there are others, but I just haven't had time
to look. But for a while I was on many of the boards and at one
point many of the boards were silly contests to see who could
post the most numerous messages.

Ronda: Do you have a sense what you were looking for on the
BBS's? You used to spend a lot of time on them.

Michael: Well at first I wasn't on local BBS's. Originally, I was
on COMPUSERVE.

William: Free time?

Michael: Well, the first two hours were free. I almost became a
beta-tester for Infocom through COMPUSERVE. I sent in the
application forms. I then received a congratulations letter, but
Infocom never sent me any games to test. The only response was a
Christmas card. That was a soured Compuserve memory. I found some
local BBS numbers listed on Compuserve and from my father and
some friends of his from work. For a while I was mostly on
Commodore BBS's and not many IBM boards. But then I started
calling the IBM boards. It was new for me when I started.
Modeming was a connection to the outside world to other people
with similar interests. It was interesting the debates about
current events. Somehow there was the possibility for
intellectual discussion which I couldn't find elsewhere besides
my parents and a few friends like Floyd Hoke-Miller. But among my
friends at school or neighbors, there wasn't much of a
possibility.
   When we lived in East Dearborn, our next door neighbor, Tom,
had an Atari and a Commodore 64. He shared an interest in
computers with me. He was my friend, even though there was a
large age gap, because we were both interested in computers. He
let me come over and try some things on his computer and I'd go
with him to computer stores.

William: Another thing about modems you can't tell the age.
Treats you more like an equal.

Michael: There's an anonymity. You don't know anything about the
other users. So you are more willing to accept them. There are
still first impressions. If you act like a real idiot, people
won't like you. But the full element of first impressions is left
out. And people tend to rank you or be friends with you on how
you act on-line, what you speak about. It does help. You tend to
get to know the people and there isn't as much blocking. And my
first handle was Wizkid. I changed my handle 2 or 3 years ago to
Sentinel. And there was one person who signed on and said it was
great knowing you. He was one of the people who knew me as
Wizkid. There was a "Remembering the OLD Days" theme area on one
of the BBS's and someone said, "remember that Wizkid." And I
said, "that was me." And he said he didn't know that. When people
change their handles, it's public but somehow people don't always
realize it. When I changed my handle, I decreased my activity.
When I decreased my activity it was because there were just silly
messages that didn't mean anything, or they just seemed juvenile,
and I don't know if that's because the people calling were
younger or they were more juvenile. The way people accept you is
based on your maturity on-line and your maturity showed through
more than your age. And there was one debate where someone said
you are just a kid. And I used to have the handle Wizkid. But it
didn't matter what your age was, it was more how mature you were.
He was trying to say "Well you're just a kid, you can't know
anything." But he was wrong. So there is less age discrimination
on the boards.

Ronda: Why did you decrease the time you spent on the boards?

Michael: I had to spend more time with school, with friends, with
my job. Whenever I used to come home from school, I used to spend
2 or 3 hours, but then my mom said, "We need the phone." So I
didn't spend my free time before homework on the modem. And then
with work, I wasn't even home on certain days to use the modem.

Ronda: But it seemed you were also a little disappointed. There
were user parties, but it seemed the computer world didn't extend
outside of the modem.

Michael: It did to a certain extent, but it didn't include
everyone. Like some people were friends before. There were modem
parties where people from the boards got together, whether it was
a software swap or a party.

Ronda: There weren't many, were there?

Michael: Well, what happened was the main person who had the
parties was from a TAG board in Taylor. He had his computer
stolen after the 2nd or 3rd party. So he stopped holding them.
Then there were multiuser boards. There was M-Net which was a
multi-user. The general ages of the users on M-Net was older than
on the other single-user BBS's. And it was more serious. It was
more a UNIX board. It was a different bunch. It was not the home
but the people in school, in Ann Arbor. It seemed like the
multi-user boards made it easier to hold parties because users
could chat live one-on-one. And when AMUSERS (a multi-user board)
closed down, I didn't get on other multi-users that were like
AMUSERS. Some people already were friends but you didn't end up
doing much so it was a little disappointing.  Cause it didn't
seem like there was any it didn't get anywhere it was just
on-line so that was a little disconcerting. It was disappointing
because that was where I had found more intellectual people but
it didn't go anywhere. And things like COMPUSERVE cost a lot of
money. There's COMPUSERVE, there's Delphi, there's Geni, there's
PC Link, there's Q-link, there's a couple of services but they
all cost money, so that's hard to deal with. And then there are
bigger boards that exist. But they all cost money. There's the
WELL. That's in California. You also pay per hour like
Compuserve. So it's harder to be on. It's like M-Net. It's the
same software as M-Net. And maybe I did find it disappointing. It
used to be there would be lots of new BBS's popping up. But they
were interesting. And now there still are lots of new BBS's
popping up. But they're silly. So it's gone downhill a little
bit. And also BBS's are similar to the CB or the Ham radio in
that people voice their opinions, or have discussions or chat or
there used to be DDial's all they were were multi-user, people
chatting, but they were 300 baud so they were super slow. Some of
those you had to acquire membership. But they were linked up
across the country. There were things called LINKS that would
connect you to other DDial's around the country. So that way you
could talk to people.
   Somehow the thing about BBS's was it was the ultimate vehicle
of Free Speech, uncensored speech. For the most part things were
not censored. What you posted was left alone. It was like
everyone's Letter to the Editor was allowed to be printed. There
would be letters debating other previous letters. Different
SysOps had different rules and some would delete messages that
contained profanity or were only personal attacks or something.
BBS's are the greatest form of free speech. The problem was you
needed a modem and a computer to get into it. So it's not as free
as it might be, but compared to the newspapers, the newspapers
print what they choose, whereas on BBS's everything is printed,
everything is published. It's more of a dynamic medium than a
static medium because depending on the board there's different
forms of dealing with messages. For example, some boards after
the first 50 messages go by, the first message is deleted, so
it's a dynamic thing. Unless somebody prints out a copy or saves
it to disk, it doesn't stay static. Like on M-Net, things aren't
deleted. They are deleted when the message SysOp of the area
decides no one is interested anymore. That's more of a choice
method of deletion, than where it deletes messages or the new one
pops in, the old one pops out and it's deleted. And even
depending on what happens, it's still an important medium.
   There was, for example, just a debate about the war against
IRAQ on BBS's. Usually you didn't see where there was dissent.
Whereas on the computer, if people wanted to, they could debate
it and there was debate about it. A free medium. It's open
access. Not closed. It's also a field where the hobbyist still
exists. There are people who develop ways of using the modem,
whether it's different compression techniques where you can send
more and larger files quicker, or whether it's different file
protocols that send them faster over phone lines. Those are
constantly developing. That is a hobbyist frontier now. Maybe
there are less people than when the computer started out. But it
still exists. It's a frontier that's not closed up yet. It's not
definite yet. New things are continuing to come out. For example,
higher speed chips for the serial ports in the computer so that
the computer can talk to the modem at a higher speed and
everything.
---------------- end of part 1 -------------------------------

Part 2 can be seen at: 

http://www.ais.org/~hauben/Michael_Hauben/Collected_Works/Amateur_Computerist/Interview_with_Staff_Member2.txt

The whole interview as a single file can be see at:

http://www.ais.org/~hauben/Michael_Hauben/Collected_Works/Amateur_Computerist/Interview_with_Staff_Member.txt

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